Acer Aspire 17-inch laptops get an update in four iterations, where all have a 1440x900 screen and offer notebook shoppers a quartet of trim choices. The 9400 (pictured above) has an Intel Pentium M processor inside, while its more sophisticated brother, the 9410, and runs with an Intel Core Duo chip. Both have ho-hum NVidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics with 64MB of graphics memory, along with 120 gigs of hard disk space.

The top-of-the-line gets a 1.3-megapixel webcam, while the low-end 7100 and 7110 models have Celeron M chips. No pricing or availability info was forthcoming, but you can bet that these cheap notebooks will provide a low-cost alternative to MacBooks with similar screens that cost at least four times more.